Geography and environment: A time of change

Abstract

Around the world, the environmental crisis is deepening. The atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and terrestrial ecosystems: all are under stress and many living species are being pushed towards extinction. Climate change, a key facet of this crisis, is unfolding rapidly, with glaciers melting in line with worst-case scenarios. Rising global temperatures are fuelling socio-ecological damage with distinctly uneven geographical consequences. We are, for instance, seeing the intensification of heat waves, droughts, floods, storms and fires, which in turn are exacerbating food and water insecurity, economic disruption and armed conflict. The impact of human activities is being written into the geological record at a pace never before seen.

These critical environmental issues, and our individual and collective responses to them, are profoundly reshaping the geographies of our lives and will continue to do so far into the future. As such, they pose some critical challenges for us, as geographers, to consider: how, for example, can we mobilise the capabilities of the discipline to conceptualise and describe these processes of social and environmental change? How, moreover, might we advance, and advocate for, more sustainable, lower carbon and fairer socio-ecological places and futures? As a discipline bridging the social and natural sciences, geographers are uniquely placed to provide answers to these questions and to play a vital role in accelerating solutions that ensure shared prosperity and well-being by advancing novel, collaborative approaches to tackle climate change, secure biodiversity and maintain ecosystems.

It is within this urgent context that Geo now positions itself: as a repository for innovative, experimental and impactful scholarship - addressing some of the biggest environmental challenges facing society today through a distinctly geographical lens. We seek contributions that push the envelope of geographical scholarship: breaking new intellectual ground, developing new formats and approaches, building new collaborations and communities, and working towards new policy.

In framing this agenda for Geo, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to our predecessors who have so carefully nurtured and curated the journal since its inception in 2014, as the first fully open access journal published by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Gail Davies and Anson Mackay, as inaugural editors, established Geo as a space for exploring collaborative research, pioneering the use of open access to support novel formats and build a diverse Geo community. Under their leadership, the journal rapidly became a place for exciting, interdisciplinary research and dialogue, often speaking across traditional geographical divides. Since 2019, Rosie Cox, Sarah Davies and David Demerit have, against the backdrop of the severe challenges posed by the Covid pandemic, continued to make the case for an open access, interdisciplinary, environment-facing journal.

Our mission at Geo is now to build on, extend and expand these core values to present an inclusive space for dialogue, attracting thinking and thinkers from across and beyond the discipline on matters of the environment, climate change and sustainability. We will be the environmental journal that welcomes new, critical and under-represented ideas; a home for leading scholars and emerging voices to come together in pursuit of fresh viewpoints and solutions to the world's pressing environmental problems. These themes, ultimately, will be guided by you, our audience and contributors. In the first instance, though, we offer five principles of scholarship, through which Geo will nurture and develop a community.

First, Geo seeks to provide a critical arena for bringing together geographical and interdisciplinary research around the following topics: the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and the politics of climate change; methods and perspectives on progressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals; novel or fresh evidence on climate damage and natural ecosystem loss; engaged environment and sustainability research; the decolonisation and democratisation of environmental knowledge; environmental health (e.g. toxic hazards, pollution and harm); breakthrough technologies (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality) in geography and environment studies; environmental governance, activism and policy.

Second, Geo is intended as a forum that promotes inclusion while maintaining a high standard of peer assessment. Part of the journal's mission is to fill in the gaps, to cover issues, methods and perspectives that might be overlooked in other journals, so we are flexible in the submissions that we welcome. They may be theoretical, empirical, commentary, review or dialogue based. Yet we encourage, in particular, submissions from the Global South, and contributions that reflect the full range of (sub)disciplines, and professions, that engage with geography. We will actively seek out contributors and communities habitually excluded from the academy, providing freely accessible material and waivers to groups less able to meet open access fees.

Third, Geo is proud to support a range of formats that build on a vision of geographical scholarship that speaks to the widest possible communities. As an online journal we are able to offer flexibility around the length of papers. In addition to traditional written papers, we also encourage submissions that exploit the full potential of the online publishing environment to advance geographical understanding - including (but not restricted to) imagery, multi-media sound and video, computer animation and code, open access data, graphic art.

Fourth, Geo seeks to provide a forum for lively debate on key environmental themes and the ways in which geographers are engaging with these topics. We are clear that the journal must develop its role as a forum for dynamic modes of collaboration, exchange and debate. We therefore welcome submissions that cross boundaries – disciplinary, geographic and professional. We will introduce and promote new formats to support this aim. Short pieces presented as a Dialogue between two or more authors on a topical concern will provide a flexible vehicle for academics to publish together and to involve those outside the discipline and outside the academy. Drawing fully on our international editorial board, we will develop Geo Themes that will define some of the core interests of the journal. A theme might, for instance, bring together a number of authors to build a collection of papers around a core area of research. These thematic concerns will evolve over time and all related contributions will be presented as a coherent body of work on the website. Regular editorials from us, and from the editorial board, will frame the agenda for Geo and we will always be open to suggestions about themes we might pursue.

Fifth, Geo will provide an outlet for papers on matters of professional interest to geographers and to a range of audiences who engage with the discipline (e.g., those active in policy, the media, education, activism, business). We encourage submissions that address geography's wider societal role in public, political and cultural life; that reflect on our professional practice as educators, researchers and coproducers of knowledge; and which explore the ethical issues that inflect our varied (inter)disciplinary engagements with the environment, climate change and sustainability. In this regard Geo is well-served by its status as a fully open access journal. Reflecting and enhancing this role as a more-than-academic journal, we will aim to be rapid and agile in our management of submissions, offering a fast turnaround from acceptance to publication, and supporting rapid dissemination of research, ideas and debates.

In sum, our vision is for an innovative and agenda-setting journal that offers an open and creative space to explore the many ways in which geographers are thinking about, and shaping responses to, the rapid environmental changes and complex sustainability challenges that are set to define the 21st Century. More than simply a repository of academic work, Geo will be a forum to develop environmental scholarship and a community to share it.